Our take on Oakland's 100 Blocks Plan

In order to deploy resources such as police presence most effectively, it behooves a city to know where criminal activity is most prevalent. Because of the impact on the City and its residents, of most concern are areas where shootings and homicides occur most frequently. This reasoning appears to be a driving factor in the Mayor's Safety Plan released in late 2011: according to the limited city documents released for the plan, 90% of homicides and shootings occurred in 100 blocks.

In this document we share the results of our analyses along with tables and maps we produced and some observations of the implications of our findings. Additionally, we detail our methodology and will make the raw data used for this analysis available for others to replicate and confirm our results. We conclude this report with some lessons about public data that the 100 block example provides for policy makers and community.